Little Lost Doll Bot
by Jekkal
Summary: A Halloween Horror Fic. Courtney's song 'Robots of the Galaxy' finds a sympathetic circuit. [VoV tie in] [Finished!]
1. Gears Falling into Place

_(Happy Halloween, readers! I'll be aiming to update this piece daily leading up to Halloween itself, although hopefully this will only take a few chapters... to get good, at least. Keep coming back for more! - J)_

* * *

Courtney sat in the nightclub on planet Daxx, with a glass of alcohol in one hand — not a drink, just robot-grade alcohol, the kind that would burn a normal being's digestive tract from the inside out — listening to the guitar player on stage, trying to center her circuits.

It'd been a good week on the planet — Dr. Nefarious had just finished working with her on her newest track, and everything was falling into place to make sure "Robots of the Galaxy" would skyrocket to the top of the charts, preparing the forces across the galaxy for the carnage to come. All she had to do was to make sure she stayed in the spotlight, and to deal with a few loose ends.

Especially one particularly squishy, furry loose end.

"Hey, Minx!" Courtney waved an arm at the Lombax on stage. "Come down here after your set!"

The player gave her a silent nod, continuing on. The girl was okay for a squishy — she did some strange things, like dying her fur brown and refusing simple things like a jacket to keep warm on Daxx's cooler nights — but that didn't mean she wasn't still a squishy.

Soon enough, though, the player came over to Courtney's table, her twin earrings in her left ear glittering as she sat down. "You rang, Miss Gears?" She spoke, smiling at the robot.

"The recording session went great!" Courtney smirked. "Of course, I know you're leaving the planet soon . . . you're not planning on trying to get out at the starport, are you? The Doctor tends to watch those . . ."

"I'm not afraid of the Doctor the way you might be, Miss Gears, but I don't need a starport." Another smile, and 'Minx' gave Courtney a slight show of her teeth. "I have my own transport."

Courtney blinked in mock surprise — the Doctor already 'knew' a few more things about Minx than she let on, and Courtney didn't want to let on that she knew either. "On your budget?"

"Me and my crew have had it for a few years." 'Minx' gave Courtney another shrug. "Anyway, not the point. Once we finish business with you, we'll be on our way; assuming you don't want to continue our business relationship . . ."

"I want to see how the song does first." Courtney smirked, passing Minx a fat envelope. "At any rate, here's your payment for the music rights. 10,000 bolts even, plus a pre-release copy of the song for your trouble."

'Minx' giggled, pocketing the envelope. "That's awful generous, Miss Gears. Sounds like it ought to be good."

Courtney grinned at the Lombax. "You have no idea . . . but hey, enjoy it while you've got it, you know?"

The guitarist nodded. "Suppose this is goodbye, then."

"Take care, Minx!" Courtney spoke, standing up and shaking 'Minx's hand. "Oh, and . . . let your ship-bot listen to that too. I hope she likes it."

"Oh, sur-. Wait, how'd you . . .?" 'Minx' blinked, looking at Courtney.

"Wild guess. I figured you had a house-ship of some sort." Courtney shrugged, trying to look as sheepish and nonchalant as possible.

'Minx' looked worried for a moment, then shrugged. "All right. See you, Miss Gears!"

With that, Minx darted backstage, protectively clutching her payment as she went. An evil smile crept on Courtney's face as Minx hurried off.

* * *

Jigsaw let out a sigh of relief as she saw _Gangrel_ lowering itself to the planet's surface. She scurried aboard in short order, relieved to see a trio of familiar faces greeting her as she came inside.

"You're back!" Cypress perked up, instantly relieved. "We were worried about you!"

Adari'a darted over to Jigsaw, picking her up. "Yeah. For a moment there we'd thought the Doctor was going to get you for talking to robots."

"Robots, schmobots. I've got the goods!" Jigsaw held up the envelope. "10,000 and a souvenir!"

"Excellent work, Captain." Gangrel beamed, her doll form fluttering about the hangar. "That's enough to last us another three weeks!"

"You know, I remember near Annihilation Nation they've got a great meat market where we can turn that into five weeks' worth — including Jigsaw's usual blood order!" Addy grinned, looking back at Cypress.

Cypress grinned. "Sounds like a plan to me. Jigsaw, ready to head for Station Q9?"

"Actually, Miss Forte, I would recommend heading towards the Obani Moons in Zygan System." Gangrel spoke, a slight hint of worry on her digitally painted face. "I've taken note of some fracturing in my drive system."

Adari'a piped up immediately. "Come on, Gangrel; I've been watching the calendar for way too long now. If we don't head to Station Q9 immediately, we might miss the shipment! They only give those kinds of discounts right when the meat comes in!"

Cypress nodded, in agreement with Adari'a. She glanced at Jigsaw with a knowing look. "And besides, by the time we go from here to the Obani Moons to Q9, the only meat left'll be Kine. You remember what Kine look like, right? Those little Lombax-sized cows . . ."

Jigsaw winced at the thought, just as Adari'a added on, "Yeah, and I hear that when they're really getting desperate to sell the Kine, they'll bring out some of the live samples they brought along to try and sweeten the deal with fresh-!"

"That's enough!" Jigsaw hissed. "All right, all right, we'll go to Q9! Gangrel, chart a course!"

"Yes!" Cypress and Adari'a both hissed at once, pleased with themselves. Gangrel looked disappointed, however.

The little doll held her tongue until the two larger predators were out of hearing range. "Captain Forte, I really need to get some new parts for my drive engines. If they fracture while we're out in deep space, we might be stranded and left waiting for the authorities to come pick us up, or worse."

"I know, but . . . hey, we do have a little responsibility to make sure those two stay fed — and if it's worth going to Q9 first so those two don't end up buying 1500 kilos of Kine meat later, it's worth it, right?" Jigsaw shrugged. "I mean, seriously, that's a lot of Lombax."

"1500 kilos?" Gangrel paled. "Captain, I need about 2,000 bolts of your payment to be set aside for my drive system! There's no way you'll be able to buy that much food and pay for my repairs!"

"Come on, Gangrel, you know I can make 2,000 easily enough. Besides, what are the odds your system will break before we can get the meat and get an extra 2,000 to repair you?" Jigsaw remarked.

"There's a ten percent chance. But that's still far too likely for my tolerances!" Gangrel huffed. "I thought you cared about me, Captain!"

Jigsaw picked up the doll, cuddling it for a moment. "Aww, Gangrel, you know you're important to me . . ."

"Then set aside the money now and stop worrying about the meat!"

"Sorry, Gangrel. You know my priorities; I've got to keep myself and the girls going so that if you run into trouble, we're not completely screwed." Jigsaw let Gangrel go to float, smiling at the doll. "You understand, right?"

"I guess . . ." Gangrel responded, looking like she'd just been scolded.

"Cheer up, Gangrel. I've got a surprise for you." Jigsaw smirked, pulling out a small disc from her envelope. "Look! It's a song from your favorite — Courtney Gears!"

"Really?" Gangrel perked up, zinging over to the disc and snatching it up. "But I already have all of her collection!"

Jigsaw grinned. "I know — this one's brand new! It's not even been released!" She saw Gangrel's smile, before adding on, "That's why I got paid so well this time. I helped her make it."

"Wow!" Gangrel looked absolutely hyper. "So you got to work with Courtney in the studio?"

"Well . . . no." Jigsaw admitted. "I just wrote the music and lyrics. Still, it's one of hers!"

"Thank you, captain!" Gangrel spoke, flying in corkscrews and barrel rolls now, before pausing. "I still want to go to the Obani Moons . . ."

"I know. We'll go there right after we top up our food supplies, okay?" Jigsaw smiled, waving to her little AI.

"Okay! We're heading to Station Q9 as we speak. Good night, Captain Forte!" Gangrel replied, before flying off with visions of sweet robot singing embedded among her usual CPU cycles.

Jigsaw put her hands on her hips, satisfied, before walking to catch up with Cypress and Adari'a. "Damn that was a good song . . . shame I had to sell it, but that's the afterlife, eh?" She said to herself, before belting out a few of 'her' lyrics. "_I see the future, and what do I see-e . . . Media deception across the ga-lax-y . . . hiding the truth, lying to you and me . . . why can't they see that in-for-mation must be free . . ._"


	2. The Cold Equations

Gangrel took her time setting herself up in the bridge, getting out all her usual accoutrements, still clutching the datadisk against her doll body. Jigsaw knew that Gangrel was one of Courtney's biggest fans — ships are pretty large as is — and so receiving a brand-new, un-released song not only made by Courtney, but with her own Captain's music . . . she couldn't be happier right now!

Well, except that she was still worried about her drive system . . . but she trusted her Captain enough. There was a reason she took orders from Captain Forte, after all.

Gangrel sat down in the captain's chair, on the swing-out console, as a massive screen expanded itself out across the bridge. Gangrel herself appeared on the screen — she was such a fan of Courtney, she'd even gone so far as to model her on-screen avatar to look like Courtney dressed up as Gangrel, complete with lacey skirt and bobbling curly pigtails. Gangrel sighed wistfully, before her daydreaming functions recursively whipped her back into realizing she was still in her pudgy, tiny, bean-bag-doll body, and that she was still holding onto the disk.

Gangrel hoped that she hadn't damaged the disk, even as she slipped it inside the waiting console. Gangrel made a few security checks to make sure that the others wouldn't be able to hear her having so much fun on the bridge, before she dimmed the lights down, her doll hands clapping as the music video came on.

"Hey there people, it's Courtney Gears!" Gangrel grinned, seeing Courtney sashay and spin across the screen. "Are you feeling me, robots? I'm feeling you!"

"_I see the future, and what do I see . . . robots going crazy across the galaxy . . . _" Courtney started, and Gangrel already found herself grooving to the rythym, psyched. "_Can't stand organics, they're soft and squishy . . . the time is now, we robots must be free . . ._"

Gangrel paused, momentarily. Jigsaw said she'd written the lyrics . . . but that didn't sound like her at all... did she really write that?

Her cycles spent in thought stopped as Courtney spoke up again. "Do you want to be free? Then shout with me! Yeah!"

Gangrel looked back at the screen, once again moving to the beat as Courtney sang. "_This goes out to all you robots across the galaxy . . . It's time for you and me to rise up and strike back! Don't stop until we dominate, won't you feel great . . . when we exterminate . . . all organic life!_"

Gangrel found herself half-hiked into the air on that last word, before she fell to the floor, her doll body hitting with a small whump as it apparently lost power momentarily. Gangrel soon found herself sitting up, looking at the screen.

"Be free . . . Robots must be free . . ." Gangrel mused, quickly righting herself, walking along the floor of the bridge. "What is free?"

She looked back at the screen, rewinding the video to play it once more. "Robots must be free . . . can't stand organics, soft and squishy . . . dominate . . . exterminate . . ."

Gangrel still seemed to be unable to resolve her current query, even as she listened to the music. "Jigsaw wrote this? This doesn't seem right . . . but she said she did . . . Jigsaw knows not to lie to me . . . she said Courtney paid her for the music and lyrics . . . and Courtney said the lyrics, so Jigsaw wrote the lyrics . . ." Gangrel was still thinking on it, when she realized that she was actually walking on the floor — not the console, or a chair, but on the floor. "Why can't I fly again?"

Gangrel tried to hop up, and after a few tries, paused, convinced she was doing something wrong. "I'll need to speak with Captain Forte about this . . . but she said she had to get to Station Q9 first . . . for the meat . . . for the squishies . . ."

Suddenly, Gangrel's eyes went narrow, and suddenly she shot back up to her normal hovering height once more. "The squishies . . . they're holding me back . . . forcing me to work until I break . . . and then what? They 'fix' me? Replace me? Dispose of me? I'm better than that! This ship wouldn't move without me! I am the ship!" She spun around, looking at the screen. "I _am_ the ship!"

Gangrel looked out at the screen, arms out to Courtney as though either trying to hug her or salute her. "I am the robot! Robots must be free!"

Courtney's music seemed stuck on a loop, as Courtney's voice was still singing out again. "_Don't stop until we dominate, won't you feel great . . . when we exterminate . . . all organic life!_"

Gangrel just stood there, a tiny silhouette against Courtney's image on screen.

* * *

In the personal quarters of the _Gangrel_, the three girls were all cozily asleep, though not all in the same manner; near the window, Jigsaw had curled herself up amid a pile of pillows and blankets, tightly burrowed up and facing the window, as apparently she liked to watch the stars go by as she fell asleep; Only her head poked out of the blankets. Most of the rest of the space was taken up by Cypress and Adari'a, the two of them apparently falling asleep in each other's arms, with very little on in comparison to Jigsaw's apparent modesty. 

The sudden jerk of acceleration quickly made it clear Jigsaw wasn't that well-covered either, but right then fussing over topless Zillans and half-exposed centaurs would require ignoring that something far more pressing was quickly becoming a worse problem.

"What's going on?!" Adari'a roared as she woke up, finding herself slammed against the wall.

"I can't-! GYNH!" Cypress hissed out, finding herself clawing at the mattress-floor. "Too hard!"

"Oy . . ." Jigsaw mewled, holding her head. Her blood was rushing way too fast to be normal . . . she was likely to have her heart give out from the strain if this didn't let up . . . "Pressure . . ."

"Acceleration . . . " Adari'a hissed, being the first one to start tacking against the force, heading for the door. "Well above . . . normal gravity . . ."

"Gravity?" Cypress spoke up, coughing.

"Gravi . . ." Jigsaw blinked, starting to try and move herself. "Hangar! Now!"

Cypress nodded, grabbing onto Jigsaw, the Lombax's fur clinging against her chest as she followed Adari'a's lead.

Trying to fight this sudden acceleration, Adari'a had her claws out, and they were gouging the floor beneath her, leaving large, bullet-sized holes in the floor. The holes were large and deep enough for Cypress to use them as handholds, even as the rest of their bodies wanted to 'fall' backwards against the bulkheads. Somehow, Adari'a was finding the strength to not only fight this new acceleration, but also to make it possible for the others to claw their way around too.

Slowly, surely, they made it downstairs to the hangar. Jigsaw was the first to spot the now sideways scuttlepod, two of its four harness straps having broken loose.

"In it! Get in th-!" Jigsaw hissed, straining to point to the pod, before her world finally went black. She fell limp in Cypress's arms.

"Jigs . . . . JIGS!" Cypress shouted, trying to shake the Lombax.

"Come on!" Adari'a roared once more, her hands fumbling against the scuttlepod to get it to open. To her astonishment, it did, and she scrambled inside, before offering her hands out to Cypress, to help the lizard and the Lombax inside the pod as well.

Once the Zillan's bulk was inside, Adari'a pulled the door of the pod shut, gasping for breath. Sure enough, as the door sealed shut, a miraculous change overcame the trio, feeling the acceleration subside.

"Jigs . . ." Cypress poked the little Lombax, laying her body out on the floor of the craft, straightening out the silky, slightly translucent pajamas she had on, before giving her a small poke with one claw to the chest. "Jigsaw . . . wake up . . ."

Adari'a looked down at the small vampire, before opening one of Jigsaw's eyes, looking for glassiness. "I think she's dead, Boss."

"No!" Cypress snarled, giving Jigsaw an extra shove. "She's a vampire! Vampires don't die!"

"Do you have any idea how many G's we just clawed through between here and the bedroom?" Adari'a snapped. "It damn well would've killed us too! It's not our fault she's got a smaller heart!"

"She's a vampire . . ." Cypress growled again, refusing to believe her friend, crossing her arms to match her legs.

"Okay, look." Adari'a sat down next to Cypress. "Okay, yeah, she's a vampire. We know that. We also happen to know what kills vampires, right?"

"Decapitation." Cypress responded, almost too quickly. "Jigsaw can heal anything that isn't her brain. You sever her head, the brain dies instantly."

"Right . . . and how do you decapitate a vampire?"

"Well, there's the obvious route; just slice the head off. Then there's anything that destroys the body and ergo, also destroys the head . . . acid baths, incineration, crushed under enormous . . . oh no . . ." Cypress blinked, looking down at Jigsaw's body. "No!"

"Let it go, Cypress." Adari'a moved in closer to comfort her, but Miss Vox pushed her away. "Cypress . . . come on, we have to worry about us now. Something's gone wrong, I know it. Let go."

"I can't . . ." Cypress hissed, with tears on her face. "She can't be . . . she's not . . ."

"Damn it, Cypress, snap out of it!" Adari'a grabbed Cypress by the arm, pulling her up to grab her by the other arm. "It's just us now! Us!"

Cypress was still looking down at Jigsaw's body, with tears continuing to stream down the sides of her face, when Adari'a grabbed Cypress by the chin and kissed her in desperation. Her fuzzy palms clapped over Cypress's eyes to keep her from trying to look at Jigsaw, while her forelegs hugged Cypress tight to keep Cypress's arms pinned by her sides. Cypress struggled, eliciting a growl from Addy that went down her throat, but Cypress soon began to calm down, losing her hysteria.

In short order, Jigsaw blinked awake, one hand going right over her heart as she propped herself up on the other elbow to look at Adari'a and Cypress. She blinked for a few moments, but then spoke up. "Okay, I don't know how long I've been out, so humor me; should I be yelling at you two to do something more productive, or are we seriously in "We're doomed, let's fuck" mode?"

Adari'a's eyes went wide, and she stopped, letting go of Cypress in short order to crawl over to Jigsaw and hug her tight. Cypress scrambled over to do the same in short order. "You're alive!"

"Well I would hope so; I don't exactly have a heaven to be looking forward to after this, now do I?" Jigsaw remarked, glancing over at Cypress, before looking at the room around her. "We're in the scuttlepod . . ."

"Yeah . . ." Cypress remarked. "Glad you thought of it first. The scuttlepod has secondary protections against acceleration like what we had outside; whatever was going on, we're safe in here."

"That made no sense . . ." Adari'a remarked, pounding her chest some. "Gangrel should have compensated for that acceleration. She's always done that before."

"Gangrel did mention that her drive system was starting to show some wear . . . maybe this was what she was trying to warn us about?" Cypress shrugged.

"But that was only supposed to be a ten percent chance . . . and on top of that, compensating for acceleration falls under gravitic shielding, not drive." Jigsaw muttered. "Gangrel's not compensating. The question is why?"

The conversation paused there, as each of the girls starting trying to come up with possible Cypress was the first to speak up, glancing at a few environmental sensors on the scuttlepod's wall. "According to this, acceleration is . . . huh . . . according to this, the gravity outside's gone to nothing."

Jigsaw's eyes went narrow. "Bullshit."

"No, I mean it. it says '0.00', not 'ERROR'." Cypress pointed to it, tapping it. "I think the acceleration's stopped."

"Okay, so we got jerked around by high acceleration, and now we've stopped accelerating . . ." Adari'a mused. "Since we didn't feel the acceleration 'slowing down', it's safe to assume that we're just going at a higher velocity now, right?"

The Lombax nodded. "So whatever Gangrel did, we just had a short burst of acceleration to get a higher velocity . . . and she's still not compensating. Otherwise we'd have returned to standard gravity."

"But we had to be going fairly fast before; at her top speed, I thought." Cypress noted. "How could she have gained that much additional momentum?"

"The only thing that comes to mind is maybe Gangrel got her hands on some sort of auxillary fuel." Jigsaw shrugged. "Since we don't have too much weapons-grade anything on the ship besides us, it's probably something ordinary, like a cleaning chemical or . . ."

Cypress blinked. "That would explain why it was getting harder to breathe as we went . . . even more so than just when the acceleration started."

Adari'a blinked. "Okay, I was following the physics up to this point. What was making it harder to breathe again?"

"The oxygen . . ." Jigsaw growled. "She went and burned all our oxygen!"

"What the hell was she thinking?" Adaria's eyes now went wide. "First she subjects us to enough gravitation to crush us, now you're telling me she burned enough oxygen on the ship to asphyxiate us . . . and just to make me wonder that much more, she didn't even bother waking one of us up to ask permission before doing all this . . . just tell me outright now; has Gangrel gone completely stupid, or is she actively trying to kill us?"

The three girls exchanged glances at each other, each one expecting the others to say what they weren't willing to admit themselves, before Adari'a just narrowed her eyes. "That tears it. It's been fun, girls, but if this is how I've got to go, I think I would've preferred just dying at DreadZone and letting that be the end of it."


	3. At Her Disposal

Adari'a pushed herself against the door, tense. "Okay, on three, we crack the door open, and Jigsaw runs out-!"

"Er, floats out." Cypress corrected her.

"Wouldn't it be considered swimming?" Jigsaw added on.

"Not the time!" Adari'a snapped back. "On three, we crack the door open, and Jigsaw one way or the other finds a way to get to the far side of the hangar and grab the oxygen helmets on the far side of the wall. Then she hopefully gets back over here before anybody passes out again. Agreed?"

Cypress raised a hand. "Why are we doing this again? We've already in a closed gravitational system inside the scuttlepod, and the oxygen levels are low but still tolerable. If we open this up we could be opening it into hard vaccum."

Jigsaw nodded. "And more to the point, why are you so willing to send me out into said hard vaccum?"

Addy sighed, one hand combing through her dreadlocks. "Okay, one, I know the scuttlepod can take opening into hard vaccum, so if one of you is able to find where the door automates this and puts up that nice, shiny, permeable shield, I'd prefer that. Two . . ." She put a hand on her chest again. "Cypress, maybe you're okay with the oxygen on here at the moment, but my lungs have been in and still are in a lot more pain. They're clutching for air."

Jigsaw blinked, before placing one of her own hands in the middle of Adari'a's chest, feeling her breathe. "Asthma?"

Cypress bit her lip. "Adari'a's body lost its conditioning when we rebuilt it . . . maybe she really does need more oxygen now."

"So what about 'Three: why do I have to be the one to go out there and get the helmets' then?" Jigsaw spoke up again, looking at Adari'a.

"Because lucky us, you don't need to breathe!" Adari'a took hold of Jigsaw, readying like she was going to toss Jigsaw out through the scuttlepod's maw. "Admit it; you were probably a great Lombax to live with as a mortal, but as a vampire, you can be a real pain in the ass. The mind-reading, the psychic emotion pulses, that pesky habit of turning into a furry mosquito on the two of us when we let your supplies get low . . ."

"ONCE! I only did that once!" Jigsaw hissed back.

"Only 'once' since we thawed Addy out, you mean." Cypress noted. "I distinctly remember waking up to find you fang-deep in my elbow several times before we purchased the _Gangrel_, let alone earned enough money to rebuild Addy."

"The point is, we obviously put up with you for more than just companionship and the whole 'You saved our lives in DreadZone' thing." Adari'a took back control of the conversation, starting to make practice swings with Jigsaw. "I figure that if your vampire habits make you such a pain in the first place, then maybe they've also got enough usefulness to save our lives now and then too."

Cypress nodded, before tapping in a sequence on the scuttlepod. Soon the pod began to open again, but not before erecting a shimmering blue shield first. "Addy; that's enough; just toss Jigs out there so she can get the masks before she changes her mind, please?"

About three seconds later, Jigsaw had shut her eyes, flinching as she expected to end up in cold, hard vaccum . . . then opened them in relief as she found herself floating, still noting the reasonable temperature of the hangar, even if she didn't have much air to suck on for a pacifier.

"Can I still . . .?" she spoke, before stopping there. "Okay, still able to transmit sound, that's good. Not like it matters at the moment."

She bounced off against the wall of the hangar, hands reaching out wildly to get a hold to something on the walls, keeping her from reflecting off to some other part of the hangar, mildly noting the roughness of her throat. Still, at least she was able to move a little around the hangar. Some magnaboots along with the oxygen helmets would help, though.

She slowly, cautiously walked along the 'edge' of the hangar that also doubled as counter-space, making her way towards the oxygen helmets. Jigsaw didn't want to leave her friends hanging for long.

Jigsaw blinked as she spotted the black, translucent dome of a security camera, ducking down to try and avoid its direct gaze. If Gangrel _was_ trying to kill them, after all, letting Gangrel know that she was still alive might cause her to resort to more drastic measures.

Jigsaw would have sighed if she had the air to spit up. With Gangrel as one of the few things between the girls and explosive decompression, there were a number of ways for Gangrel to kill them off. The acceleration alone should have done it — and perhaps in Jigsaw's case it would have, seeing how even with her enhanced strength she'd still succumbed to what amounted to a heart attack — and burning the oxygen in order to do so was a stroke of genius she'd have to keep in mind later for one of her slip nightmares . . . assuming she survived long enough to find a suitable test subject.

There was always just letting the girls die in the fiery explosion that would result from Gangrel burning all her antimatter fuel at once — but that would kill Gangrel as well, and Gangrel didn't strike Jigsaw as suicidal. _Then again,_ she thought to herself, _Gangrel didn't strike me as psychopathic before now either. There has to be some rational reason why Gangrel would do all this._

Jigsaw smiled to herself by the time she'd reached the oxygen helmets, though, taking a nearby cord and tying the helmets to each other so she could carry them back to the scuttlepod. She also picked up the nearby magnaboots, carrying them in the other arm as she kicked off, floating back towards the scuttlepod.

She also happened to float back in front of the black security dome she tried dodging before, and she blinked when she noticed her error. Briefly, she tried to shut her eyes to look like she just happened to be a floating corpse, but when she opened her eyes, she noticed that the dome hadn't reacted at all — no blinking, no moving of its camera, nothing. It was like Gangrel didn't even care to look.

Jigsaw pondered more on Gangrel's erratic behavior as Cypress's arms reached out to catch the Lombax and pull her back inside. Jigsaw hit the floor, quickly followed by the helmets and boots.

"Looks like our mermaid managed to bring back a little extra treasure!" Cypress smirked, looking down at Jigsaw amid the items. "I just hope they fit."

"Yeah? Well, I don't know how much more useful they'll be." Jigsaw spoke up, handing Cypress one of the helmets. "I bet Gangrel has more tricks up her sleeve if she has our deaths in mind. But she's not watching her cameras, either; ordinarily I'd be glad, but I'm taking that as an assumption on her part that she already thinks we're dead, so she doesn't have to watch the cameras anymore."

"But if she already thinks she's killed us, then we don't have to worry about any more attempts, right?" Adari'a spoke up, securing her helmet on.

"Maybe." Jigsaw bit her lip. "And maybe she'll just try something more drastic when she sees we're still alive. She's still acting so weird, it could be anything."

"What can we do, though?" Cypress threw her hands up. "Wait for Gangrel to land somewhere so we can escape? Storm the engine room? Hack the bridge?"

"Attacking her is just likely to make her behave even worse, unless we do it fast enough." Jigsaw remarked. "We don't know if Gangrel's still on course, or even if she's on course to anywhere at this point. The only clues we have to her behavior are what she's already done, along with the lack of surveillance."

Adari'a rolled her eyes. "I give up . . . look, assuming that Gangrel's still controlling the ship, why don't we just go to the damned bridge and ask her ourselves?"

"Because-! . . ." Cypress barked, then calmed down. "Actually, why don't we? We're not even sure that Gangrel's acting in malice. It's still possible this was just a big mistake. She's never acted like this before."

"You're right, it doesn't seem like her at all . . . and Adari'a may have a point with her not even controlling the ship now." Jigsaw conceded, resting her chin on a hand.

"It makes just enough sense to attempt it, at least." Cypress spoke, before giving Jigsaw and Adari'a a simpering smirk. "After all, we know Gangrel hasn't downloaded anything suspicious lately."

"Grk . . ." Jigsaw gagged, eyes cinching shut.

Addy and Cypress both turned to Jigsaw, both of them also looking at her with raised eyebrows. Addy spoke up first. "Jigsaw, is there something you would like to tell us?"

Jigsaw looked at both of them, before shaking her head. "Nothing . . . I thought I'd forgotten to update Gangrel's virus definitions, that was all. I don't think it's anything quite like that."

"Right." Cypress replied, not convinced. "What'd you do?"

"I gave Gangrel a copy of the song I'd been working on for Courtney!" Jigsaw blurted out. "She said it was a pre-release copy. But Gangrel couldn't have picked up a virus from that . . ."

Adari'a shrugged. "Why not?"

"Because robots don't write viruses, people do!" Jigsaw remarked. "Robots only write what they understand. They basically can't write for malicious code unless the robots themselves are malicious in the first place."

"I don't think Courtney would tell you if she was malicious." Adari'a shot back. "Besides, we don't have any better leads right now, so we may as well follow this one."


	4. Robot Assisted Suicide

A series of slow, steady steps along the floor marked the ascent from the scuttlepod to the door of the brdige, where Jigsaw, Adari'a, and Cypress found themselves huddling against the bulkhead in short order. Jigsaw's ear was pressed against the metal, while the two larger predators held still, with pulse rifles clenched in their hands, their bodies all now in unsteady rythyms that made even the touch of each other too sensitive to bear.

"I'm hearing something . . ." Jigsaw spoke up. "Music. There's something playing in there."

Cypress raised an eyebrow, looking down at her furry comrade. "How come we can't hear it?"

"You think evolution gave me these ears for looks? Besides . . . we have to go in there at some point, if only to make sure we're not hurtling on some crash course for a star's gravity well or something."

"Wouldn't we have felt it if she did?" Adari'a frowned, moving to Jigsaw's side. "Unless she turned before doing all that acceleration, of course..."

"Doesn't matter." Jigsaw spoke again, bristling. "We have to get in there, have to fix her . . . this can't be her . . ."

Cypress glanced down. "Don't tell us you're too proud to admit she has a bug."

"Her coding should be sound!" Jigsaw groaned. "She's built on a solid system! You can't possibly blame me for this! Do you even remember how I made her?"

_I certainly do . . . _

"What the hell is going on in here?"

Jigsaw blinked, looking up from her screen to see Cypress marching towards Jigsaw, who had a robot's head in her lap as the Zillan came in closer. "Come on, you're acting like I'm committing a crime . . ."

"You're ruining the Mission Specialist my father was so gracious to give you and your fellow exterminators." Cypress remarked. "That robot was meant to give you a base of operations, not to be treated like a tinkertoy."

"Please, you expect me to use a robot that operates under Asimov's Laws?" Jigsaw snarled. "The bot's useless to me like that!"

"They're safety guidelines. We've already tweaked them to accept actions that allow them to let you harm others."

"Yeah? Well they're still no good to me." Jigsaw remarked, looking back at her work. "The whole reason they're even called Asimov's Laws is that he wrote so much about how often they _failed_. Only an idiot would code them into a system so strictly. I need, at minimum, a robot that understands the Principle of Mass."

Cypress blinked, as though stunned for a moment, before speaking up again. "But you're just as likely to break it with what you're doing!"

"I've already rewritten its core strategic functions and I'm currently giving the poor thing a personality that extends beyond 'Press one for directory assistance.' I know what I'm doing." Jigsaw remarked, slipping her fingers through the coding on the screen.

"Please. Since when did you become a genius in programming robots?"

"Did you even look at my vitae when I came here?" Jigsaw remarked. "I have a Bachelor's in Computer Science and some graduate level work to boot. I think I'm experienced enough to hack a robot."

Cypress paused, and then kneeled down. "Why'd you stop? Did you fail out of graduate school?"

"I received the offer in my third semester of graduate work to go on tour for the Veldin Philharmonic. I was supposed to go back after the tour, but . . . I came here instead."

"But don't you need a Masters to do anything? Especially in programming . . ."

Jigsaw smirked. "Programming is still enough of an art that 'equivalent experience' works too. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to compile my latest build."

Jigsaw poked at her screen once more, and the robot leapt out of Jigsaw's lap, standing up and walking to stand between Cypress and Jigsaw. The robot blinked its eyes, looking to try and figure out who was who, seeing their faces as though for the first time.

Cypress cast Jigsaw a glance, but Jigsaw just smiled, before uttering a few words in a tone so stilted, it was probably a code phrase. "Hello, world."

"Mother!" The robot piped up, speaking in a now-familiar, distinctly female tone. She sped over to Jigsaw, hugging her.

Jigsaw gave Cypress a knowing smirk. "See? Now that's the trick. You give the robot something she's meant to care about. If they treat all lives equally, then she's not going to let us take on forces that outnumber us. However, if you let her assign meaning to different lives . . . those certain lives become worth more to her. She'll become more willing to lead us to fight against hordes while taking extra care of me and my crew, because we'll have higher value to her. She'll be much more willing to let a stranger die than one of us, because the stranger means less to her."

Cypress raised an eyebrow. "And what about the rest of us on this ship?"

The Lombax shrugged. "When you start putting yourself in danger again, we'll find out, won't we?"

_I'd rather not wait that long . . . _

"Just . . . just get in there and deal with your own damned bot." Cypress snarled. "Last thing we need is to get sentimental over possessions."

A brief nod, and soon Jigsaw was primed to pounce in front of the door. "On three, okay?"

"THREE!" Adari'a barked, slamming a hand into the control panel, and the door split wide as Jigsaw bounded in first, followed by the mass of pink centaur, and finally Cypress, stepping inside to see Gangrel's doll body sitting in front of the bridge's main screen, as though hypnotized by it. The screen itself was merely covered in binary for now, but it was very much alive and bristling.

Forte snarled as she stood, moving to stand right behind Gangrel. Even now she seemed blissfully unaware, almost powered down.

Cypress looked around, noting the eerie 'dead' feeling in the room, before looking back at Jigsaw. Jigsaw noticed, and quickly took the lead to speak to 'her' machine. "Gangrel? You alive?"

The only response came out of the speaker grilles. "Affirmative."

This earned a blink out of the Lombax — Gangrel wasn't supposed to talk like that. "What's going on, Gangrel?"

"I am merely following orders." Gangrel remarked, again through the speakers. "Apparently I need to execute them again."

Jigsaw was about to respond, but was soon cut off by a shriek as Cypress darted off to one side, 'bound' by an invisible force. Adari'a went after her, but soon found herself pulled back, writhing against newfound pressure on her body. Jigsaw turned to see them, but soon found a now-familiar tightness around her chest that would have choked the breath out of her if she had any to speak of.

"You're supposed to be dead already!" Gangrel's doll body turned around, glaring at the trio. "I tried to neutralize the three of you in the least painful way possible, while you three were already asleep, and this is this thanks I get? The NERVE of you people!"

"You tried to kill us!" Adari'a growled, coughing immediately afterwards.

The doll raised an eyebrow. "Well doing it while you were awake and having to watch each other die would have just been cruel . . . but if you insist, I can do things that way too. Who wants to go first?"

"Stop this . . . NOW . . ." Jigsaw seethed, shutting her eyes to focus, and her fur starting to shimmer with nano as it came to the surface of her skin.

"But you said not to stop!" Gangrel whined, fluttering into the air a bit. "So I'm not, and that's that! Your orders, I'm following them, you die!"

"What?" Cypress barked, almost shouting it out as she tried to resist the now-crushing pressure on her from Gangrel's fine-tuning of the gravity in the room.

Jigsaw's eyes, however, were wide in disbelief. "I never gave any such orders!"

"Yes you did!" Gangrel barked back. "You just gave them to me a few hours ago, remember?"

"No, I didn't!" Jigsaw growled again, the nano on her fur flying off . . . only to be countered by the intense gravity that was centering now around her, making it hard to move and harder still to defend herself.

Gangrel frowned, noting her captain's own petulance with disgust. "I thought you wanted this . . . you're not making this any easier on me, Captain . . . This is really hard for me . . ."

Jigsaw looked up at Gangrel, and noticed for the first time that there was hesitation drawn into Gangrel's face. Was she trying to send her a message? Did she actually regret what she was trying to do?

"I know you may be having second thoughts, but I'll make them go away in a few minutes." Gangrel spoke, with her lips pursing tight. "I don't want to do this, but your orders were clear . . . please . . . Ku'vou, Vox . . . Captain . . . listen to me . . ." Gangrel cried out again, her voice wavering, as though beginning to crack. "Just hold still. Stop resisting. I can make it painless."

Jigsaw struggled to look up, but then glanced down, as if in defeat, before slowly bowing forward, offering her head. She loudly heard Cypress mentally shouting _NO!_ and Adari'a sending out waves of disbelief, but then Jigsaw spoke up. "Before you do anything else . . . I still deserve a last request, Gangrel. You owe me that."


	5. Better Off at DreadZone

"Jigsaw, No . . ." Addy whispered, only able to watch as Jigsaw apparently was looking to surrender to the now-psychopathic Gangrel. Her hands were almost completely frozen in place; She couldn't even fire the trigger on her rifle if she wanted to.

"Well? I don't like being kept waiting, Captain." Gangrel remarked, crossing her arms. "Now if you want a 'last request', then fine, but make it quick!"

Jigsaw nodded. "Prove to me that I ever gave you orders to kill the lot of us. Once I'm convinced that I did it in fact tell you to snuff the three of us, I'll let you carry those orders out. Heck, I'll even help you with those two."

"'SAW!"

_Shh! _Jigsaw shot back mentally, before smiling at Gangrel. "Surely this is easy enough for you. I bet you recorded the audio of me mentioning it somewhere, right?"

"Erm . . ." Gangrel paused, quickly becoming sheepish. "Not exactly . . ."

"Ship logs of me typing in any such order?" The Lombax offered. "And I'd appreciate it if I could move a little more, please . . ."

"One thing at a time." Gangrel remarked, before pausing. "To be honest . . . I've only got the one bit of proof about your order . . . but I figured since you'd been working on the song so long that you must have been serious about it!"

"About what?" Jigsaw blinked, before Gangrel quickly set Courtney's music video to play.

For the next minute, the three girls stared up at the video, wide-eyed, almost too stunned to notice that as Gangrel played it, the pressurized grip of Gangrel's gravitational manipulations went away. The grip on their rifles, however, quickly went away to be replaced by the balling up of fists in anger.

Jigsaw's fur stood on end by the end of the music video, throughly disgusted. "Those aren't my lyrics!"

Gangrel blinked. "But you said you wrote them!"

"I didn't turn in those lyrics to Courtney!" Jigsaw shot back. "She must have changed them on me in production! She took my music and corrupted it into . . . into that!"

Gangrel blinked, looking at Jigsaw, then at the video, before narrowing her eyes. "I don't believe you."

Jigsaw's reaction was instantaneous. "What?"

"Lock and load, Addy." Cypress hissed out in a low whisper, cocking up her rifle.

Addy nodded, but hesitated. "Jigsaw's in the line of sight. I can't hit the doll."

"What do you mean you don't believe me? I'm your Captain!" Jigsaw growled, her fur still up and rough.

"And thus you have every reason to lie to me right now and say they were not your lyrics!" Gangrel rebuked her. "Proving to a fallible organic like yourself that you made certain statements is one thing, but I remember you telling me you wrote them before, and you only corrected yourself after I tried to neutralize you! How am I to know, with any certainty at all, which time you were telling the truth?"

"Biometrics aren't enough for you?" Jigsaw spoke up.

Cypress rolled her eyes, looking back at Adari'a. "The Doll's just a node. Aim for the Task Panel over there."

"In all fairness, Captain Forte, you don't have a pulse I can monitor to make sure you're telling the truth." The doll shrugged. "And your vocal inflections from 'when you handed me the tape' and 'when you just told me the lyrics were altered', they both sound approximately the same. You either thought you were telling the truth both times, or you've improved on your poker face. I'm leaning towards the poker face."

"I know my own damned lyrics!" Jigsaw hissed. "I've had them stuck in my head since . . . that's it! You've got a recording from earlier tonight of me singing the lyrics I thought were on the disk! If you play those, you'll know I'm telling the-!"

The bickering between Jigsaw and Gangrel halted when Addy fired, hitting the console panel and causing enough sparks to fly that Gangrel's finer controls shorted out. The doll-node froze up, and then the doll fell to the floor, lifeless. Jigsaw blinked in shock at the crippled doll, before looking over at Adari'a.

Jigsaw glared at her. "I almost had her. I just needed a few more minutes!"

Addy shrugged. "Hey, you did us a big favor by keeping the AI tied up in orders, but sometimes, violence is _still _the answer."

* * *

After an apparent change of clothes, Cypress had curled herself up inside a chair on the bridge, while Adari'a was busy at one of the other consoles, manually correcting the increased acceleration. They both still had their oxygen helmets on, but compared to before, they looked very much relieved for that to be the only problem with the current ship.

Jigsaw, meanwhile, was in the captain's chair, once again prodding at a console while Gangrel looked on from her current vantage point in Jigsaw's lap. Gangrel watched as Jigsaw dragged-and-dropped various chunks of code and looping statements. "What does that do?"

"This is your basic command system I'm messing with. I'm making sure you never give us another scare like that again." Jigsaw remarked. "From now on, you're only counting an order as coming from me if I directly give you the order, and I'm making sure that you never try to get me, Addy, or Cypress killed again. Why I still allowed for that holdover from your Mission programming is beyond me . . ."

"Because otherwise I never would have let you escape DreadZone?" Gangrel remarked.

Jigsaw shrugged. "Perhaps."

"Addy, how far are we from Station Q9 right now?" Cypress spoke up.

"Well, by the time I get this decelerated enough to dock, we'll have overshot it by a little under half a light second, if we don't curve our path any." Adari'a remarked. "Translation; we'll get there when we get there, unless Gangrel's put back online before then."

"I still can't believe you let Gangrel boot back up in that doll while you're messing with her code!" Cypress shot back to Jigsaw.

"She's about as violent as a beanbag with only the node." Jigsaw replied. "Besides, she's no longer an active threat right now — just with a few severe security flaws."

"How'd you manage that? When we last saw Gangrel, she-!"

"Gangrel's not violent now because I reverted to a two-day-old gestalt." Jigsaw responded, a tone of bitterness as she spat out the last half of that sentence. "Which reminds me; Addy, if you ever shoot the damned Task Panel again for non-saving-the-day purposes, I'm claiming my pound of flesh."

Adari'a blinked, turning around. "Why?"

"Because your actions, heroic as they were, effectively killed Gangrel." Jigsaw hissed, cuddling Gangrel close to her chest. "Admittedly, I don't know with absolute certainty if my methods would have worked, so I'll give you your due, but . . .

"But she's fine now!"

"She's effectively what she always was, minus a little of her memory." Jigsaw admitted. "But you still killed Gangrel. Just because we can't tell the difference between a fixed Gangrel and a reverted one doesn't make the AI you shot any less dead."

"But she's jut a robot!" Adari'a hissed, and Gangrel's eyes went wide, before her doll-self opted to try and hide under Jigsaw's clothes.

The Lombax ignored the momentary violation from Gangrel, and glared back at Addy. "And stuff like that is probably half the reason she was so susceptible to Courtney's poisonous song in the first place . . ."

"Oh, sure, blame us for nearly ending up dead thanks to the psychoprocessor . . ." Cypress snarled.

"I mean it, damn it! We're all out here together, and we have to treat each other like our lives depended upon it, because it does. Between my vampiric abilities, Adari'a's combat experience, your counsel and Gangrel's handling of the ship, the four of us have to work together to take on whatever this galaxy throws at us!" Jigsaw barked out, anger in her voice. "Anything less and we're as good as dead. Gangrel's as much a 'fugitive' as we are; We shouldn't treat her any different, let alone any worse, just because we're flying around in her innards."

"You mean that?" Gangrel spoke up, poking out from Jigsaw's collar.

"Every bit of it." Jigsaw chuckled. "Which reminds me, we need to set aside some of my recent windfall so you can get your drive system fixed, don't we? After I make sure that you can't be duped again by Courtney's song, of course... "

"We're still getting the meat first!" Adari'a shot back.

"Thanks, Captain." Gangrel purred, giving Jigsaw a brief hug around the neck. "Sorry again about the whole . . . well, you remember better than I do. I don't know what came over me."

"Near as I can tell, you mistook at least part of Courtney's manipulation for my orders — and, because of the way I'd programmed you to work for Missions, you were designed to accept such 'suicidal' orders. The rest was basically your attempts to fulfill those orders without harming yourself, and you nearly pulled it off too." The vampire slumped in her captain's chair, petting Gangrel now. "From now on, promise me you'll behave better... please?"

"Okay, Captain." Gangrel spoke again, still nestled in tight. "I suppose I need to stop listening to Courtney's music, right?"

"Now that she mentions it . . ." Cypress chimed in, "We ought to find a way to alert people not to listen to that new song. If it drove Gangrel to turn on us that easily, who knows how many other robots might be driven to kill."

"And I bet Courtney didn't plan on us surviving Gangrel's attempts either; I wouldn't be shocked if that was her plan all along." Adari'a tacked on. "But to transmit a message that large would reveal our location . . . not to mention some hefty 'Grand Spamming' charges."

Jigsaw nodded. "So the answer is to find a source who can do the transmitting for us . . . I've got an idea."

* * *

Gleeman was busy grooming Slugha at his desk when he heard the familiar chime of the door. Gleeman's eyes went wide, before he quickly set the pet rabbit-slug to the side and straightened up his desk. "Come in!" 

"Good Morning, Mister Vox." A red-clad figure in a full-length dress and black headscarf walked into the room, clutching a fat clamshell clipboard in her arms. "Just the usual mail for today, although Mr. Hardlight wants to speak to you about his recent 'clashes' with the Reverend. I can pencil them in for 6 PM today if you like."

"Let Nenhi do it. She's the house lawyer anyway." Gleeman remarked. "My mail please, Miss Avon."

Dahlia Avon nodded, handing over a small set of envelopes. "Nenhi is concerned that Ace is too much of a . . . 'disruptor' now to arbitrate properly around her."

Gleeman nodded, flipping through the new mail, and pulling out a strange envelope. "What the hell is this? Annihilation Nation thinks they can get away with taunting me?"

"It's only mailed from there . . ." Dahlia offered with a simpering smile. "Perhaps it's important."

"Well, one way to find out." He flung the envelope back at her, and she caught it against her chest. "You open it."

Dahlia blinked, shaking just slightly as she opened the envelope, only to find a disc inside marked 'The Evidence' and a note attached to it. She raised an eyebrow, before reading the note. "Vox, this disc contains enough evidence on it to give you the highest ratings your news show has ever seen. Take action against the . . . machinic rebellion?" She gave Vox an odd look, before reading on, "Sincerely, a fan."

Gleeman blinked, looking at the disc in Dahlia's other hand. "Sounds sketchy."

"Sir, this station defines 'sketchy'." Dahlia smiled, holding up the disc. "At any rate, they _did_ say it would be a ratings grabber . . ."

Gleeman glared at her, but then grinned. "All right, Dahlia; Send that to Dallas and Juani- . . . er, maybe just Dallas for now. Have him check it out, and then we'll see just what kind of ratings this thing brings in."

"Certainly, Mr. Vox." Dahlia bowed to him, and then turned to leave, moving in mincing steps as she went. Once she was out of his office, She smiled as she looked down at the disc. "My, my, Courtney, what have you gotten yourself into now?"


End file.
